Article 41 of the Federal Constitution requires that political parties develop "...rules to ensure gender parity in the nomination of candidates in federal and local congressional elections."

Electoral law

The Federal Chamber of Deputies is composed of 500 members, elected for a 3-year term, 300 of whom are elected in single-member constituencies by plurality vote, with the remaining 200 members elected by proportional representation (PR) in five 40-seat constituencies. Political parties are required to guarantee that at least 40% of the candidates on the lists are of the same gender. This applies to both lists of candidates for the PR election, and candidates for the constituency elections. However, parties that democratically elect their candidates are exempt from these requirements of the Electoral Code (Código Federal de Instituciones y Procedimientos Electorales, COFIPE, Article 219).

Legal sanctions for non-compliance:

Electoral law

Parties not complying with Articles 219 and 220 will have 48 hours to rectify their lists. After this period, if still found to be non-compliant, parties will be publicly reprimanded by the General Council of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) and given an extra period of 24 hours to rectify their list. Finally, if the 24 hours pass and the party is still in a state of non-compliance with quota regulations, its electoral lists will be rejected by the IFE (COFIPE, Article 221).

Rank order/placement rules:

Electoral law

For the PR elections, each segment of 5 candidates on the list shall have 2 candidates of each sex, alternating between men and women candidates (COFIPE, Article 220).

The Senate is composed of 128 members, 96 of whom are elected in single-member constituencies by plurality vote, with the remaining 32 members elected by proportional representation (PR) in a single nationwide constituency. Political parties are required to guarantee that at least 40% of the candidates on the lists are of the same gender. This applies to both lists of candidates for the PR election, and candidates for the constituency elections. However, parties that democratically elect their candidates are exempt from these requirements (COFIPE, Article 219).

Legal sanctions for non-compliance:

Electoral law

Parties not complying with the law will have at first 48 hours to rectify their lists, or will be publicly reprimanded. 24 hours after the reprimand, the IFE will refuse to register the list (COFIPE, Article 221).

Rank order/placement rules:

Electoral law

For the PR elections, each segment of five candidates on the list shall have two candidates of each sex, alternating men and women (COFIPE, Article 220).

Voluntary Political Party Quotas*

* Only political parties represented in parliament are included. When a country has legislated quotas in place, only political parties that have voluntary quotas that exceed the percentage/number of the national quota legislation are presented in this table.

Additional information

In February 2014, Mexico passed a constitutional amendment to the Article 41 of the Federal Constitution requiring that that political parties develop "...rules to ensure gender parity in the nomination of candidates in federal and local congressional elections." This amendment marks a critical improvement over the past constitutional requirement of 40-60 % representation of either sex in the Assembly, and requires parity and alternation between women and men on parties’ candidate lists.

“Mexico is only the third country in Latin America to enact a gender parity law for its national legislature and is proud to have the highest percentage of women in the Senate and fourth-highest in the House of Representatives of any Latin American country. While the previous round of reforms had increased the minimum quota of women from 30 percent of the list to 40 percent, parties were avoiding the quota by holding primary elections, a loophole that is now closed.”

“Within the framework of the previous federal electoral process (2012), and because of the parties’ lack of compliance with the gender quota when nominating candidates—due to the application of a selection process based on the democratic processes foreseen by their statutes—the Electoral Court of the Judicial Power of the Federation passed a sentence that solved the supremacy of the gender quota over any other internal selection procedure to nominate candidates used by the political parties, including the internal elections.” The Assembly set 30 April 2014 as the deadline for developing a set of amendments to the electoral legislation to set out detailed rules for implementing this constitutional amendment through laws regulating electoral processes and the operation of political parties.